Self Love

Self Love

by Peter Shikli
3 Aug 2003

Stuck unexpectedly to come up with an original mealtime grace, I quipped, "And may we love others as we love ourselves. Amen." Plagiarizing (and possibly misquoting) Christ seemed like an honorable way out of a tight spot. Wolfing down stuffed peppers, conversation ceased around the table for a moment, just long enough to reveal a problem with my otherwise fine admonition.

I truly did want to love others as I loved myself, except I had no idea if I loved myself. I suspected that I liked myself, but I wasn't even sure of that. I had no idea how a person could love himself, or whether that was even a good idea.

This was distinct from a person serving his own needs, based on some drive perhaps similar to self love. An admonition like, "Serve others as you would serve yourself" would make great moral sense to me, and certainly worth doing. Doing something about world hunger would clearly be noble (after I got seconds on the stuffed peppers). But to love myself in some profound way, and then to love others like that, well, that seemed at a much higher plane. Unfortunately, I felt badly equipped for the climb.

The closest I could come to even a starting point was a suspicion that knowing someone preceded loving them. It was hard to love strangers and easy to love family and friends. This familiarity bred affinity over the years as we grew somehow closer through shared experiences. So my starting point had to be that I would have to get to know myself -- we certainly had a lot of shared experiences.

Note that I have never subscribed to the notion that love arose from someone else loving me, some kind of reflective reaction that fed upon itself and grew (like a non-stop ping pong game). Of course being loved was always great, but it didn't seem as tightly coupled as knowledge and then admiration of the person I loved. I remembered girl friends who had loved me and I had not loved them back. I loved my kids, even when they were too young to love and when they grew older but made it clear they didn't love me (until after they got what they wanted).

I have also never subscribed to the notion of falling in love, not as some kind of accident like falling down the stairs. Falling into lust, yes, but love was something I would somehow produce, something formed in my mind, heart or soul, something I would then project outward. I recalled it as an intentional act with my wife (after the falling in lust part). I grew to know her, to admire her, to peer inside this other person, and then I made a decision that I would love this person. Not because she had either an astounding rack or an outstanding character that somehow left me powerless, as in the romance novels that she likes. One of the strengths of our marriage is that our romance grew into this intentional love, and instead of fading away, the romance grew by an act of will. So many others seem to have sat idly by while the butterflies in their stomachs stopped flying, unaware that butterflies are not on autopilot.

Unlike the soap opera wisdom (oxymoron?) that there is only one true love out there for each of us, I believe I could have reached this point with countless other women. I made a decision that this woman would be the one true love for me because I would make my love that strong. And our marriage was not the result of circumstances beyond our control, some mindless destiny that left us powerless to the "power of love". I chose her and decided to dedicate my life to her. If I was to love myself, I would have to find that kind of love. But I had no idea how to do it with a mirror.

So it was that I put this project on hold, alert for tips on how to go about it, but for the moment, clueless on how to proceed.

The next piece fell into place some weeks later. Padding into our kitchen, I spied between shopping bags my 11-year-old son having breakfast in the dining room. He didn't hear or see me, so I belied up to the counter and became a fly on the wall. He twittered the cereal box looking for something interesting to read. A seagull floated by in the distance, and his sleepy gaze followed, perhaps enthralled by the wonder of flight, perhaps lost on an adventure with Peter Pan. An empty mouth brought him back to his earthbound bowl, and he packed both cheeks for his next trip. A turtle plunked in the aquarium across from him, and his imagination flew across the room. The slightest of curls on his mouth, and I could tell he had projected a child's love for one of God's creatures.

And then I realized what was happening with me. Right then and there, I was growing to love him more. It could have nothing to do with returned love for I was completely missing from my son's adventure. Perhaps it was a type of nostalgia, to see myself from so long ago. I see other children doing what I must have done when I was their age, and I do feel kindness and warmth. But what I felt for my son was much deeper.

It had to do with the affirmation that he was signaling to me that he was a curious, kind-hearted young man, full of promise yet at peace by himself. Because his guard was down, I could see past the bravado and farting noises that are otherwise staples for an 11-year-old. It was as though we could show each other our souls because our bodies did not get in the way. I could look inside, and because no one could see me, I could receive all that wonder without the distractions of being a father.

I was convinced that I needed to become a fly on the wall with other family members more often, to feel that surge of love. It was my decision to love them, and this helped me do my job. I resolved to find more hiding spots, to learn to be more sneaky, and most importantly, to have the fortitude to put aside whatever urgency was driving me when I happened across an opportunity to look into the soul of those I loved.

That afternoon, another piece fell into place. I imagined being on the receiving end of such stealthy observation. Not from my kids; they are too hyped to even slow down to a walk. Perhaps my wife, I thought, and that gave me pause, to be discovered in my many misdeeds. But then I realized I had been in almost a trance watching my son, a state of quiet joy that permitted only loving thoughts. In such a trance, I could imagine my wife dismissing my foul deeds with a loving, "He's just finding his way."

From nowhere, it occurred to me that if there is a personal God, he would be that almighty fly on the wall. Looking into my soul as I had done to my son, he was finding the reasons to love me. The priests had pounded into us that God was love, that he loved us, but for the first time, I had a clue as to how he did it.

Now if only I could figure out what it was that God could find lovable in me, what it was that he would see as that fly on the wall. Of course he had more practice, but I resolved to try to be that fly on the wall with myself. I spent that day imagining hovering above myself trying to see what I could see.

My amateur attempt at an out-of-body experience was spotty at best. Life has a way of commanding all of our attention with the urgent but trivial right here on the ground. It's hard to look down at myself while engaged in a heated discussion with my son about the merits of soap and how a bath will be in his future. I could see God able to do it, after all he was just hanging around, and I could see experts at Zen meditation doing it, since of course they were just hanging around, too. But I had to figure out a way to somehow gain that vantage point in a life that made it hard to find quiet time. If God could find something worth loving in me, so would I.

I felt as when we played Blind Man's Buff as a child, and everyone was yelling, "You're getting hotter."

More ramblings like this: www.shikli.com/blog

Peter Shikli is CEO of Bizware Online Applications. You can view his bio and contact him at pshikli@bizware.com.